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Baker’s Island
TWO pale sisters, all alone, | |
| On an island bleak and bare, | |
| Listening to the breakers’ moan, | |
| Shivering in the chilly air; | |
| Looking inland towards a hill, | 5 |
| On whose top one aged tree | |
| Wrestles with the storm-wind’s will, | |
| Rushing, wrathful, from the sea. | |
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| Two dim ghosts at dusk they seem, | |
| Side by side, so white and tall, | 10 |
| Sending one long, hopeless gleam | |
| Down the horizon’s darkened wall. | |
| Spectres, strayed from plank or spar, | |
| With a tale none lives to tell, | |
| Grazing at the town afar, | 15 |
| Where unconscious widows dwell. | |
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| Two white angels of the sea, | |
| Guiding wave-worn wanderers home; | |
| Sentinels of hope they be, | |
| Drenched with sleet, and dashed with foam, | 20 |
| Standing there in loneliness, | |
| Fireside joys for men to keep; | |
| Through the midnight slumberless | |
| That the quiet shore may sleep. | |
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| Two bright eyes awake all night | 25 |
| To the fierce moods of the sea; | |
| Eyes that only close when light | |
| Dawns on lonely hill and tree. | |
| O kind watchers! teach us, too, | |
| Steadfast courage, sufferance long! | 30 |
| Where an eye is turned to you, | |
| Should a human heart grow strong. | |
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